New Delhi: The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) will in a week’s time come out with a notification about implementing e-invoicing, a form of electronically-authenticated invoices, from 1 October only for businesses with turnover of Rs 500 crores or more, a top official said at in ASSOCHAM webinar today.
“The QR codes are definitely not happening on October 1 but the e-invoice schema and 500 crores turnover related notification should be out by next week and the industry can start working on as everything is ready, the FAQs, the circular etc will be issued at the earliest,” said Mr Yogendra Garg, Principal Commissioner (GST-I), GST Policy Wing, CBIC in an ‘ASSOCHAM e-Conclave on 3 years of GST – Further streamline needed?’
He also stated that CBIC would improve the existing GST return filing system instead of rolling out a new model.
Earlier, sharing his views in the ASSOCHAM e-conclave Mr Garg said, “E-invoicing, once it is stabilised it should be a great help in further reducing the compliance burden, yesterday only the GST Implementation Committee has recommended that we will go ahead with October 1 deadline but with reduced turnover, so to begin with we will not do for Rs 100 crore and above as we had notified, we will soon come out with a notification to make it 500 crore from October 1 and as it stabilises than we will bring a date for 100 crore and above.”
He added, “Simultaneously we are going to notify a new schema as well because there were some issues – export invoice and e-way bill way related parameters were not there. So some of those changes are going to be notified soon.”
Sharing his views on the industry’s suggestion about the need for training the officers, Mr Garg stated, “We are constantly endeavouring to gain from strengths of both central and state officers and those get transferred, so there is a plan going forward in the new year to ensure that there is more interaction to gain from each other’s’ strengths and make it a better experience for taxpayers.”
Noting that the government’s endeavour is to make the life simpler for the taxpayer and has been reactive and sensitive to trade requirements, he said, “There are challenges ahead but be rest-assured, the whole idea is to keep it as simple as possible and focus is on improving compliance mechanism, make it further simple and bring the costs down.”
Mr Garg however lamented about lack of communication with industry and urged to keep communication channels open so that the policy wing keeps getting to know as to what is required and expected.
“The problems, issues and challenges come to us very-very late and not on a regular basis. If there is regular communication that will keep us updated on what are the requirements from the industry,” he said.
Mr Pratik Jain, Chairman, ASSOCHAM National Council on Indirect Taxes suggested for one-hour long discussion every month to highlight industry issues and also suggested creating a forum for regular interaction between the Government and Trade would go a long way.
Addressing the ASSOCHAM e-conclave, Chief Executive Officer, GSTN (Goods and Services Tax Network), Mr Prakash Kumar said, “We are happy that in last three years we have been able to have a system where more than 47 crore returns have been filed, more than Rs 25 lakh crore worth payments have been made in 14.23 crore transactions, more than 128 crore e-way bills have been generated.”
Ms. Anita Rastogi, PwC Partner requested that during these unprecedented times, the government should increase its support to trade and industry whereby the liquidity in the hands of taxpayer increases, for example, allow payment of GST on transactions pertaining to reverse charge mechanism through credits, allow tax payments on collections basis etc.
Ms. Gunjan Prabhakaran, Partner & Leader- Indirect Tax, BDO India highlighted that “A collaborative and consultative approach among key stakeholders, i.e., Government, Industry and Service providers can help India Inc. move seamlessly to a faceless and a paperless GST.”
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